Keywords in Communication‘Mesh’ Economy and Business Channels in an Indian Urban Slum

Nimmi rangaswamyMicrosoft Research India

1. Abstract

We discuss the role played by a variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of an urban slum in Mumbai. We do this looking closely at ICT- based businesses, their social embedding and contexts of business practices in the specifics of a heterogeneous slum community living on the suburban fringes of Mumbai. Mesh-economy functions as keyword to debate technologically mediated social interaction and networking among low-income persons running small businesses and services. The primary focus of the paper is to articulate the concept of mesh-economy to highlight particular technological characteristics that evolve for contextual adaptation and usage. The ‘mesh’ is sustained and con-joined through informal network and communication channels; face to face, neighborhood, community, national and trans-national conversations that build relationships for sustaining ongoing economic transactions. We argue that ICTs adapt to these socio-business contexts as two distinct processes 1) As immersive spectrum of adaptations from simple entertainment to business communication 2) By dissolving distinctions of the formal and non-formal channels of business practices

Key words; ICT, Non-formal economy, Small business, Urban slum, Mumbai, Ethnography

2. Introduction

The paper is informed by Information and communication technology (ICT) usages in small survival economies in an urban slum/low-income community. The primary focus of the paper is to articulate the concept and keyword, mesh-economy, to highlight particular technological characteristics that evolve for contextual adaptation and usage. We define the keyword ,‘mesh’, as social network of business practices and channels conjoined and sustained through face to face, neighborhood, community, national and trans-national conversations that build relationships for sustaining ongoing socio-economic transactions. Our research field is a three sq Kms space of human habitat in West suburban Mumbai called Behram Baug with 10,000 households and a population of 50,000. Behram Baug is inhabited by a heterogeneous population comprising of upper middle to low-income classes and a slum quarter. The last, our research focus and study, comprises of a multitude of households and survival economies in the form of small shops, cottage industries, servicing stores and a self-employed human labour force offering diverse economic services. We choose enterprises that deal with, broadly, four kinds of ICTs 1. Mobile phone products and services 2. PC-using enterprises 3. TV and internet service providers 4. Video-parlors.

Being a work-in-progress we keep the focus broad to accommodate a range of ICT’s such as mobile phone, PCs, TV via key persons who drive local immersion, entrepreneurs doing small business and services [We do not report a close-up of technology-usage viz internet or mobile phone by the local population]

We develop four categories of technology to note their distinct trajectories of demand and contextual immersion in the slum community despite overlap in several streams of business practices and enterprise building. We consider these business as harbingers of organic technology immersion in resource-poor environments, with little or no governmental or non-governmental support and extending access for populations largely excluded from technology in the ‘everyday’ . Given this premise we investigate routes of tech-adoption yielding usages for business, employment, building skill-sets, communication, entertainment and others accruing socio-economic value to the user

We locate and ground our research in multiple frameworks to accommodate processes of social networking in slum enterprises underscoring the a) current state of understanding of small businesses in largely survival economies b) underlying social processes c) grounding a&b in an ICT for development discourse. We gauge the fit of data to these frameworks and suggest new ones through exploratory key terms.

We observed ICTs adapt to local business contexts primarily via two social processes a) as an immersive spectrum of adaptations from simple entertainment to business communication b) by dissolving distinctions of the formal and non-formal channels of business practices. By highlighting the range of ICT adoptions in the specific context of survival economies, a key finding in the study points to the merging of technology related economic practices with informal business practices. These, in turn, were tied to the non-formal processes of small businesses embedded in the metropolis of Mumbai. The study also revealed the ubiquity of non-formal business ecology in low-income settings readily extending to ICT based business and services. Through a systematic field enquiry we draw profiles of ICT based small business to promote genralisable findings and possibly extend insights from the study to other scenarios.

3. Methodology

We used a variety of qualitative methods comprising open-interviews, observations of community life and base-line surveys of business outfits. Thus far, we have completed four months of field observations between February and July 2008 and since February 2009, re-visiting our field to pose sharper research questions, a finer focus and more detailed data collection. Initially, we recorded broad delineations of history, demographics and political administration of the community speaking to five administrative office bearers of the area municipal ward. Having taken the initial step of developing a broad understanding of local history, politics and social-geographics, we conducted focused examinations of a random selection of shops in the slum quarter of Behram Baug; 20 small mobile phone stores, eight shops that depend on PC/PCs for work, two profiles of cable television and internet service providers and two video-parlor

owners. We undertook semi-structured and open-ended interviews with shop owners to allow us define everyday dealings, client demands and business networks. We also noted the variety of communicative resources and social networks supporting enterprise building taking care to keep focus on everyday networks contributing to overall business sustenance (how are critical resources like capital, space, skills, employees, technology procured, how expansion happens through business networking, management of local demand for services and client dealings). We further assembled data from field observations and key informants, those who occupied important socio-political positions in the neighbourhood, for estimates of ICT enabled businesses such as mobile phone stores, PC-using business and VCD/DVD parlors. 4. Framing the Research Study

a) Literature survey

We brought together three themes to identify relevant research literature and frame data; a) definitions of micro and small business b) definitions of non-formality in the business practices of survival economies c) definitions of ICT for development

We define our focus of study as micro and small enterprises (MSE) the bulk of who in India belong to the non-formal sector and is deeply intertwined in informal business practices (Agarwala 2005). We broadly use Mead and Leidholm’s (1998) seminal research for a working definition of MSEs to be ‘the universe of activities including all enterprises engaged in non-primary activities excluding agriculture, including manufacturing and services where at least 50% of the output is sold and engaging anywhere form 1-50 workers (including unpaid family members, working proprietors, apprentices and part-time workers). The study examines the dynamics of a set of enterprises ‘consisting of one person weaving baskets for sale in the market as well as factories with 40 or 50 workers, using complex machinery’. The authors further qualify MSE’s as very small the majority of who consist of one employee with the upper-end of the tail comprising of 50 workers as possibly 2% of the universe of MSE’s. The majority of MSE’s are informal businesses of which only a small minority bear potential for expansion with most remaining small survival economies (Duncombe & Heeks 2001). The term informal (non-formal) economy was coined by social anthropologist Keith Hart in 1971 during his field work in Western Africa (Hart 1973). It denotes survival economies of the poor whose individual economic transactions do not ever rise to the taxable limit and occupies a zone of commercial exchange, mainly by offering their labor. Mumbai offers a unique location to explore our research subject, hosting an extraordinarily vibrant and organic commercial culture, arguably, accounting for 68% of its commerce.

There is considerable extant literature around informal economy in global contexts (Peattie 1980, Moyi 2003, Lugo & Simpson 2008) and urban micro-entrepreneurs in India and their information and communication behaviours (Donner 2007). Non-formal economy is also referred to as the grey market. The term ‘grey market ’ refers to the flow of goods and services through structured distribution channels other than those set by the government, law or other authorized players. Frequently, this form of parallel activity occurs to keep prices of products lower than official market rates and more importantly, they receive tacit support by

the state and other authorized players from a mutually beneficial economic arrangement. A popular definition of informal economy calls it a group of underground activities that have legal ends, but employ illicit means (Ghersi in Lugo & Simpson 2008) They are activities that do not intrinsically have a criminal content, but must be carried out illicitly, even though they are arguably legal and desirable activities. The existence of such an informal economy is attributed to the lack of property rights and the overall bureaucratic obstacles restricting individual entrepreneurial activity (Ghersi and Ghibellini in Lugo&Simpson 2008). In countries like India, it makes a range of goods and services affordable to the large number of low-income and poor populations. These enter into informal relationships with partners and employees to optimize business opportunities. These allow mainstream (and audited) economic practice to subsidize itself by entering into informal business relationships. The state, in turn, exploits the situation, by aligning illegally with these businesses for a price. Therefore, in order to conceptualize non-formal as economic phenomenon it is important to recognize their ethical and normative dimension.

Our third viewpoint embraces the notion of ICTs for effective development and social progress promoting a lived understanding of social contexts of technology use in resource-poor communities. Although ICTs, particularly, PC and internet adoption show a persistent growth, they are not the preferred medium of communication, especially in resource–poor social ecologies such as the urban slum. This happens, not in the least due to unrecognized potential and possibilities of internet by the local population, but as a result of high cost barrier, regular maintenance of technology and expensive training for those who wish to acquire employable skill sets. The spread of ICT’s has added to the variety of media technologies available to people and debates around its impacts. Various actors have converged on the idea of ICTs to augment development and business prospects for hitherto overlooked ‘information-poor’ communities. Development discourses view them as development tools and technology as agent of change and prosperity for a majority of citizens hitherto excluded from the fruits of progress. This vision of ICT’s does not go unchallenged. Literatures have called attention to the challenges of national projects dedicated to digital equality for its citizens (Colle and Roman, 2003 Dagron 2002). ICT for development literature has highlighted the perils of assuming unilateral gain from deploying technology that cannot promote community participation (Heeks 1999, Cleaver 2001, Bailur 2007), long-term sustainability of ICT community projects (Roman &Colle 2002, Gurstein 2005, Heeks 2005a), an absence of research in evaluating internal, external and contextual imperatives in impacting e-readiness in these countries (Molla & Licker 2005, Heeks 2005b). ICT immersions in the context of the urban slum (our research field) devoid of state or donor driven efforts to pull technology followed a locally generated entrepreneurially driven enthusiasm for Information and communication technology, a demand-supply economic logic for ICT products and services, and in some cases, an expansion and regeneration of businesses.

Urban shanty towns or slums in India are essentially composite and digitally-stressed communication ecologies. There has been little previous research focusing on issues of technology immersion, especially ICTs, in the urban slums of Mumbai. Some of the questions we wanted to answer were as follows: How do computing technologies find their

way into these communities? Who are people driving technologies? How is technology being received by the community?

b) The Research Field

Our research field, since February 2008, is three sq Kms of human habitat in west suburban Mumbai called Behram Baug with 10,000 households and a population of 50,000. Behram Baug is inhabited by a heterogeneous population comprising of upper middle to low-income classes and a slum quarter. The slum quarter, focus of our ethnographic research, is an assortment of small habitats arranged by ethnic status (the Hindu population cluster by regional/linguistic affinity, Muslims by their sub-sects, the Parsee community has gated-residence) and associated business activities (clusters of automobile repair, metal/hardware/plywood shops). Habitats were shaped by ‘waves’ of migrants from all over the country looking for livelihoods in Mumbai. These tended to create regions within the slum marked by particular ethnic identity of migrants and usually, a specific business activity. We evidence a fair amount of fit between particular types of ethnic community and nature of small business. For example, migrant communities from the north of India own and manage small household street business and comprise a bulk of the auto-rickshaw drivers.

There is, to this day, a constant trickle of migrant persons and around 30% of the households have an earning member sending money to home/families in native villages and towns. Social behaviour followed rules of thumb when single male migrants from the same village or a cultural region begin sharing single room tenements (up to 5 people staying in the room) Many of these are causal daily wage-earners sharing work-shifts, boarding and lodging. They almost always shared professions.

Formal collective spaces promote organized social activity facilitated by formal political and/ or community groups. These consist of small gymnasiums for men, Yoga centres, crèche for children, community centres that are active during social festivals and local election time. A few centres call themselves welfare associations that transform as activity centres, some of them holding computer training classes. The ‘green’ space within the area is the obvious site for most shared community activities and periodic sports meets like athletics, cricket and street soccer. These events are popular in the locality and heavily promoted by local political organizations. Informal spaces in Behram Baug are the flourishing ‘street corner societies’ and popular local congregations. Small groups of men tend to gather outside local landmarks like fast-food joints, video parlors or even a marked open space. Week-ends at the two main street intersections transform into employment sites for unskilled laborers looking for potential employment opportunities. These are groups of 5-6 men who look to work together on odd household repair and maintenance jobs like painting, plumbing, carpentry etc. They lend out their services for as low as US$2 per day. Deals are collective in nature, undertaken and negotiated by a group of men. It rarely occurs that two person negotiate an independent deal between them. Informal spaces and socializing sites for women are the vegetable and fish markets and passages between the rows of houses hosting public water supply at

specific hours of the day. The latter fill up with women during water supply to clean dishes, wash clothes and bathe kids.

FIG 1 The nooks of Behram Baug Fig 2 Arterial Road flanking the Slum quarter

Broadly, businesses in Behram Baug are small scale and spread across the neighbourhood. The two arterial roads bordering the slum quarter, are filled with a plethora of shops selling a diversity of goods and services. Most of these are fairly entrenched business with built shop-space offering numerous domestic products and appliances, garment and jewellery, mobile phone stores, photo studios, fast-food joints, small scale industries and commercial enterprises like metal workshops, steel fabrication stores, hardware and auto spare parts shops/garages, furniture and plywood stores. The only other business at odds with the rest in the two arterial roads is the CD- video parlor enterprise (more about these businesses in the next section). The two roads lead into the city highways housing upscale residential and office buildings and two upscale malls and multiplex cinemas. The myriad by-lanes branching off inwards from the arterial roads ( Fig 1 & 2) house innumerable tiny kiosks/stores, tea stalls, vending stalls/ carts, single-room industry of fabrication, metal and hardware industries. A street market flanking the two arterial roads sells cheap garments and china made watches and accessories on specified days of the week. The average income per person in this locality is estimated to be around 3,000 to 4,000 per month. We discuss in detail about ICT-based shops and businesses, like mobile stores, PC-enable business and TV broadcast and internet providers in the next section on technology immersion in Behram Baug.

Exploring small businesses in Behram Baug leads to the inevitable discussion on a multitude of everyday socio-business networks at play. They survived on regular daily interactions with several agencies The shops, stores and servicing centres were embedded in the larger non-formal economy of not only the neighborhood but the sprawling metropolis of Mumbai. Researching them meant investigating a ‘mesh-economy’ comprising of diverse informal businesses and related social networks.

5. Findings: Non-formality of ICT-presence

In this section we identify a spectrum of technology immersion that meets a range of needs from entertainment to business-related communication in Behram Baug. We present an overview of four types of technology-related businesses collated from field observations and interviews with shop owners and managers. The technologies are a) Television b) mobile phone c) PC d) VCD-DVD. We make efforts to build our second argument that ICT-enabled businesses, especially in resource-poor and informal spaces like the urban slum, organically evolve, deeply intertwine with the broader non-formal economy of the neighbourhood and dissolve formal/non-formal economic distinctions in their everyday business networking and practice.

a) The mobile Phone Store

There are arguably 100+ stores that deal with mobile phones in Behram Baug; selling hand-sets and accessories of all varieties, branded, China-made and second-hand, SIM cards, pre-paid, re-charge/top-ups and the newly mushrooming mobile software/hardware repairing and mobile phone downloads. Given the neighbourhood and customer profiles, there is a vibrant rotating second-hand mobile phone business and huge demand for tiny re-charge denominations (as low as 50 cents). Most of the hand-sets are procured at established grey markets of Mumbai forging and establishing enduring relations with wholesalers to meet the steady demand for cheap handsets. Out of the 100 there are around 5-7 branded stores aka Nokia priority stores and these and a few other smaller shops do not store used-sets due to the high probability of them being stolen! While no shop owner admitted to the fact of storing and selling stolen devices and we got a whiff of their occurrence when one of them said that that he rather trade in cheap yet new mobile phones than risk the humiliation of ‘bad repute’ in his neighbourhood for selling ‘stolen’ phones..

The Mobile Phone store, especially ‘talk time’ business needs very little investment; all they need is space, sometimes as tiny as 200 sq feet that can be had for a rent of approximately US$90 per month, and maintaining constant touch with the sales and distribution staff of various mobile phone service providers. Multi-nationals like Vodafone, operate through a bunch of field agents transacting with the stores in neighbourhoods like Behram Baug. The latter are looking to make deals with the agents for better profit ‘cuts’ and promote attractive ‘offers and discounts’ to maintain a loyal clientele in a cut-throat competitive market. Many believe that while SIM card sales are hitting a plateau the sale of handsets, new and used, and talk time were booming! The business of mobile repairing has evolved in the last 2 to 3 years as a lucrative option for mobile store-owners looking to cash-in the considerable demand for maintenance of mobile phones (many customers had better repair the phones than throw them way to buy a new one). Most of the store-owners either train themselves or hire employees versed in mobile handset. They rapidly move-in offering repair and servicing hand-sets that need software ‘flushing’ (re-formatting) or replacements of various hardware parts. The functioning of mobile repair as thriving lucrative trade ties-up with the emerging training institutes all over Mumbai and in neighbourhoods Behram Baug charging a fairly hefty fee as tuition, anywhere between US $ 300-500 for a two month course. We also found a fair amount of mobile stores-keepers offering apprenticeship to those who are willing to

work without wages and learning valuable repairing-skills and eventually graduate to paid employees or independent shop-owners. A rough estimate puts half of the 100 + mobile stores undertaking some form of repairing work. Interestingly, we find a well-developed social ecology of informal communication channel and social networks among mobile store owners, repair experts, training institutes and customers.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous, adopted across business and service segments, with usages focused on business, networking and personal communications. We inferred that each household in Behram Baug arguably had one active mobile and acquired topmost presence even before the television and the refrigerator. Large service providers compete in providing deals on a plethora of services the other to deliver bouquets of and bundling calling services. At the store level, many of these further turn into informal arrangements between re-charge vendors, shop owners and clients, e.g; many store owners buy re-charge coupons or demo-cards in bulk making a higher profit margin, passing on the benefit to a loyal customer by charging a little less that his neighboring store. A store keeper mentioned there can be no competition between the 100 odd shops in Behram Baug because of the very low margins, what he calls a ‘perfect competition landscape’! The bulk of migrant labour settled in Behram Baug find these offers irresistible; they are cheap, reliable and a stable communication channel.

b) PC-using businesses

PCs acquire interesting immersions in Behram Baug; they are mostly found in businesses needing PC/PCs to provide client-services (They are almost never used internally for business management or accounting). These are enterprises running cyber cafes, photo studios, selling lottery tickets, on-line traders, and mobile downloads. There are two cybercafés in Behram Baug that make most business renting the internet phone. VOIP services are very cheap for long-distance calls and attract a mixed clientele from the slum and the middle-class residences. There are 18 registered on-line traders in the neighborhood and own a PC for trading. The bulk of demand for services is local for payment of household/shop electricity bills and booking railway tickets. Demand for the latter stems from the vast immigrant population who periodically visit their native homes. Shop owners service the neighborhood’s lack of basic PC skills to pay bills on-line and book tickets acting as human agent-mediators. Out of the 100+ mobile stores around 10 had a shop PC for software downloads. The downloads, as claimed by shop owners, are free mobile phone application software for repair and maintenance. All of them denied they downloaded audio-visual material for client phones, due to the apparent illegality of these practices. From field investigations and key informants we came to understood much of these practices were undercover, strongly networked and executed from home PCs. As one mobile store owner and on-line agent said “downloading is not permitted by law especially for a commercial exchange… I keep away from such practices… There are quite a few around here that do these. They do it from their PC s at home… MP3, video, movies, perhaps some mobile phone apps…”

There are around 15 lottery ticket selling businesses that use a PC and internet and for the purposes of declaring the winning tickets periodically (There is no other internet

activity). The parent company sets several shops all over Mumbai (especially in localities near a slum or low-income residences) with networked PCs and propriety software. The lottery is a booming business in slum neighbourhoods and one of its clients had an interesting rationale for patronizing the business, “…. We are looking for capital. Getting cash loans is not easy… may be a lottery would help us tide the shortage and infuse money into the small store I run…”.

There are 10-12 photo studios with four of them using a PC for digitally mixing photos. Apart from the regular demand for official documents there is a bourgeoning one for digital mixing, restoration and background re-formatting of photographs. Most of the PC software required for touch-ups and refurbishing photos are pirated and visual software tools are learnt on the job by at least one task-dedicated shop employee

We also found an up-scale super market housing two PCs catering to adjacent and boarder neighbourhoods. The trade-off for starting-up a fairly upscale super market in a slum locale was cheap rental. The owner said,” We usually get bulk of customers from the near-by well-off communities but we are seeing a steady trickle of people from the slum dwellings who drop by to buy and we do offer attractive deals on most food items..”

Computer adoption in Behram Baug is largely driven by a local demand for PC-based services and business prospects ensuing from focused technology adoption and careful weighting of return on costs. It is still an expensive proposition to adopt PCs for businesses despite most of them being assembled or refurbished. To their credit, shop owners are quick on the uptake when it comes to learning maintenance and repairing skills and offering client-fed services

c) TV and Internet Service Providers

Television has a huge presence in the community reaching 80% households. Broadcast TV is delivered to each home by a bunch of cable TV and a few direct-to-home operators’, three big MSOs (multi-service operators) and around seven small LCO’s ( local cable operators), reaching almost all of residential households in the slum community with shared viewing pulling-in households with no TV. Installation and monthly viewership charges are flexible depending on client-ability to bear service costs. Most offices of cable service providers are cheaply rented single-room outfits located in the back alleys of Behram Baug. The front office has a reception area with a single PC and a dial-up connection to the server network (The PC is always occupied with one or more of the employees play solitaire or on-line games). One among the three big outfits began internet services three years ago (We were unable to track the ISP providing internet to local operators). The clients for internet were offices and residential building bordering the slum quarter in Behram Baug. Flyers and small hoardings act as public advertisements, but most business deals happen through word of mouth. Deals are made with entire apartments or a cluster of buildings to activate new connections. Deals and packaged rates differ for domestic and office connections and negotiable. The staff was reluctant to discuss client-packages suggesting they were ‘classified information’!

Local service providers of television and internet are established businesses in Behram Baug. They adopt a host of informal practices to immerse services and draw clients around its location with the slum quarter providing a conducive socio-geographic environment in co-opting a variety of business dealings

d) VCD/DVD Parlors

Technology for entertainment is delivered by half a dozen video-parlors and VCD/DVD stores. All of these are bunched together flanking an intersection of the arterial roads in Behram Baug. The parlors cater to an exclusively male clientele with four movie-shows per day on a 32 inch TV screen or projected a wall. The shows provide the cheapest form of local entertainment to an immigrant labour/male population. Adjacent to the parlors are the CD shops lending a variety of multi-lingual (Indian regional languages and English) movies for viewing. CD’s are sourced from regular agents in established grey markets in the city’s commercial district. CD jackets displaying the names and screen shots of movies in several Indian languages are displayed prominently in the stores. Many non-literate clients recognize movies by the visual cues and rented them out. The VCD shops cater exclusively to the parlors and do not rent to other persons in the neighbourhood. They may, intermittently, lease CDs to individuals who are known to the store keeper or introduced through a known reference. They are priced differently and come with an impress deposit of US$5 per client/per movie. One of the shop owners said “we make good money …You can well estimate if there are 7 screens (the TV plus walls) in one video parlor and 3 shows per day,… and they will rent the CDs only from this cluster of shops...” The client base is largely the daily-wage laborers working in construction sites and small hotels. The store owners point out that this is probably the only entertainment the class of workers can afford and enjoy collectively in Mumbai – particularly, ‘the fun of watching movies in their native language’!

All stores order stock from wholesale agents in the commercial grey market districts of Mumbai developing a businesss supply-chain with agents and retailers. All business interactions are conducted through personal networks with no paper transactions. Customers are won purely on the basis of the store’s video collection and rental-structure; assurance of picture quality, flexible charges and negotiable impress deposits. CDs and DVDs are loaned only to people in the ‘loop’ i.e. part of the informal/social network of viewers and traders. Queries by people outside of the loop are discouraged by quoting outrageous rental fee! A shop owner said “…. it is very easy to set up this business- not much money capital but enough of social capital and trust…. There is a ready customer base and need little advertising – it’s all on display and travels with word of mouth. The challenges unlike other businesses, is that there is no credit relationship with suppliers, the payment is immediate. There is also the threat of raid from the anti piracy cells … but we get along…”

The video-parlors are probably the greyest of businesses among those we highlight in the paper. From procuring stock to setting shop and soliciting clients there are no formal regulatory rules. Despite irregularities, the shops have established rules of thumb to do enough business for 12 hours a day. It emerges that critical business enablers are the loyal

and enduring customer base and flexible business arrangements between customer and the enterprise owner

6. Discussion and Conclusions: Arguments for mesh-economy

We present arguments supporting our choice of keyword, ‘mesh’ economy. The study compelled us to begin thinking along a mixed and/or hybrid economy in low-income/slum settings nevertheless functioning as an economic process unifying the local market economy. We call this mesh economy to closely introspect and delineate its defining set of features. We specifically note the features of the mesh and processes that underlie and bind the economics of the market

To understand small entrepreneurs in the ICT markets of Behram Baug it is important to see those as part of a continuous, interrelated, enmeshed business spectrum involving the local and the extra-local. The idea of the ‘mesh’ transcends the formal/ informal dichotomy of business relations rendering them irrelevant to the local economic dynamic. The slum economy essentially relies on street level activities, use of daily, hybrid, transactional spaces, individual and groups who may not have fixed addresses but are still reliable business transaction partners. Such an understanding renders the heuristic separation of formal and informal economic processes as unrewarding to express the role in entrepreneurial socio-economic networking. Spaces hosting urban slum survival economies depend on makeshift resources and have multiple uses. The homes double up as office space, warehouse/storage, as lodging and boarding for family and business visitors. The streets are spaces for social and business exchange and services and local infrastructural and resources are participative, communal and shared.

We take inspiration from Galperin and Bar (2006) who explore the role that could be played by microtelcos—small-scale telecom operators that combine local entrepreneurship, innovative business models, and low-cost technologies to offer ICT services in rural areas. But our field, though urban, is a low-income setting showing similar play of creative entrepreneurial skill and business organization. Most of these are invested to maintain and secure hardware, labour, skills and business infrastructure and comprise the core of business organization. Needless to mention, these were predominantly sourced through social networks, rarely through a certified formal channel (e.g banks, employment agencies, branded markets).

Let’s take the example of a PC using small enterprise; Shahir, 23, run a small shop promising a host of services; PC assembling and trouble-shooting, visa/passport/travel services, air and railway ticketing, networked gaming and utility bill payments.

Shahir said, “I recently travelled to a pilgrimage shrine Umrah in Saudi Arabia … I realized the potential to service the vast local Muslim population in Behram Baug, , desirous of taking Haj. I am being ambitious that I want to deliver all in one stop shop.. My father migrated from Kutch; I was born here and know every nook and cranny of Behram Baug. I have a huge pool of people I can rope in for my business. Shoeb, who is my childhood friend, is my CTO! He takes care of assembling

servicing the PCs and also procures hardware form his network of businessmen … I network with my friends in the computer training institute and the part time college I attend who are willing to partner in my visa and travel services… I want to begin a wireless internet service in the neighbourhood… there is much demand for cheap and reliable internet…” Shahir is currently making small profits from a booming railway e-ticketing business servicing a vast immigrant labour population and paying electricity bills on-line for local residents. He has sold around 50 PCs the last year and looking to expand his client network. His two shop PCs double up for gaming consoles and has a small stream of slum children who pay 10 cents per hour of use.

Shahir’s PC using business is a case in point for a) organic ICT immersion b) ICT services adapting to local demand c) informal social networking to source ICT skills and hardware. The entrepreneur builds his tiny enterprise by rule of thumb, routing services that cater to a local and immediate clientele while arranging and gathering information and infrastructure to expand into new realms of related businesses. The mobile stores in Behram Baug also follow a rule of thumb logic uniting two big players, the multi-national service provider and the local vendor through a host of intermediaries. The ‘glue’ connecting the various players are the myriad social connections, local and city-based, ably aided by communication channels supported by mobile technologies and neighborhood level conversations. Using the mesh economy framework we find energetic business arrangements around a spectrum of socio-communication relations and networks contributing to enterprise productivity

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by Microsoft Research Lab India Private Limited, "Scientia", 196/36, 2nd Main Sadashivnagar, Bangalore -560 080 India. The author would like to thank Sumitra Nair, Raj Rath and Ashwini Shelke for field ethnography and data collection.Nimmi Rangaswamy is an Associate Researcher with Microsoft Research Labs, India. Phone: +91 9819049423 e-mail: nimmir@ Microsoft.comhttp://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/nimmir/nimmirhome.htm

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